1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a very high bit rate digital subscriber line, and more particularly to an operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) method to be used in conjunction with a very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) standardization.
2. Related Art
In a current high bit rate communication network, a need exists for a broader bandwidth because desire for information by subscribers continuously increases. Therefore, very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) is newly on the rise as a next generation technology. There is a need for providing operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) according to a tendency toward very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) standardization in a standardizing step, because current very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) is not yet standardized. Operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) relates to a network management group that provides a network default display, performance information, and data and diagnosis functions.
Very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL), which is one of the high bit rate digital transmission techniques utilizing telephone lines, can modulate and demodulate data of at least 10 megabytes (MB) per second through a copper line in either one direction or in two opposite directions. Currently, a downward transmission rate, transmitting to a subscriber side, is 130 to 52 megabits per second (Mbps). Currently, an upward transmission rate, transmitting to a switching center or central office side, is 1.5 to 2.3 Mbps, and a transmission distance is 0.3 to 1.5 kilometers (km).
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) T1E1.4 of U.S. and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) of Europe are now attempting to arrive at very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) standardization. In the case of an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), the transmission rates which are provisionally defined by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) are as follows: 52 Mbps/6.4 Mbps at a distance of 1,000 feet (1 kft) for an apartment building or small town, for example; 26 Mbps/3.2 Mbps at a distance of 3,000 feet (3 kft) for a small residential town, for example; and 13 Mbps/1.6 Mbps at a distance of 4,500 feet (4.5 kft), for a dispersed area or circumstance, such as an agricultural village, for example.
In contrast, in the case of a symmetric digital subscriber line, American National Standards Institute (ANSI) provisionally defines the transmission rate as 26 Mbps at 1 kft and 13 Mbps at 13 kft. Synchronized discrete multi-tone (S-DMT), carrierless amplitude/phase modulation (CAP), quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), and others, are proposed as a line code. Aspects at issue in the current very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) standardization efforts are modulation, Power-Back-Off, an upward/downward signal dividing method, a spectrum assignment, a channel multiplexing method, a transmission mode, and others.
Manufacturing companies of the VDSL Coalition group and manufacturing companies of the VDSL Alliance group continue to dispute the VDSL standardization. The manufacturing companies of the VDSL Coalition wants a Single Carrier Modulation (SCM) to be used in the VDSL standardization. The manufacturing companies of the VDSL Alliance wants a Multiple Carrier Modulation (MCM). Manufacturing companies such as Broadcom, Infineon, Globespan, and Lucent belong to the VDSL Coalition. Manufacturing companies such as Alcatel, Texas Instruments, and Cisco belong to the VDSL Alliance group.
As mentioned above, under the circumstances of standardizing and developing very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL), it is essential to realize operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM). Therefore, it is necessary to develop operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) in accordance with the progress of the standardization.
However, OAM has been developed based on the standard of Broadcom in the VDSL Coalition group. Broadcom provides an OAM having been developed using an embedded operational control (EOC) according to the standard of Broadcom. In order to provide the OAM using EOC, after setting a VDSL link, a special complicated procedure to perform the OAM using EOC is required. EOC has a complicated frame structure including unnecessary parameters. EOC also has a very complicated process for performing OAM in a current VDSL system. OAM has a very complicated frame structure and process of performing OAM. Further, OAM provides insufficient information in many sections.
Exemplars of recent efforts regarding digital subscriber line issues include: U.S. Pat. No. 6,389,062 to Wu, entitled ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY DOMAIN EQUALIZER CIRCUITS, SYSTEMS, AND METHODS FOR DISCRETE MULTITONE BASED DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER LINE MODEM, issued on May 14, 2002, U.S. Pat. No. 6,226,322 to Mukherjee, entitled ANALOG RECEIVE EQUALIZER FOR DIGITAL-SUBSCRIBER-LINE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM, issued on May 1, 2001, U.S. Pat. No. 6,219,378 to Wu, entitled DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER LINE MODEM INITIALIZATION, issued on Apr. 17, 2001, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,905,781 to McHale et al., entitled COMMUNICATION SERVER APPARATUS AND METHOD, issued on May 18, 1999.
While these recent efforts provide advantages, I note that they fail to adequately provide an improved method of operating, administrating and maintaining very high bit rate digital subscriber line.